Entrepreneurs seeking legitimacy for their stigmatized products with mainstream audiences must deploy strategies to redefine their products' cultural significance. This paper investigates how the body, often a focal point of stigma, serves as the foundation for these strategies. Through an analysis of exemplary cases in the sex toy industry, we identify three strategies—visibilizing, obfuscating, and transforming—used by entrepreneurs to deal with different sources of stigma, including tribal stigma, blemishes, and abominations associated with the products. Our findings provide novel insights into the role of the body in entrepreneurial strategies to tackle stigma and gain legitimacy for their products, thereby contributing to the literatures on entrepreneurship in stigmatized settings and cultural entrepreneurship.

中文翻译：

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身体作为受污名环境中企业家的文化资源：女性为女性提供性玩具的案例


企业家若想为其被主流受众所污蔑的产品寻找合法性，就必须采取策略来重新定义其产品的文化意义。本文研究了身体（通常是耻辱的焦点）如何成为这些策略的基础。通过对性玩具行业典型案例的分析，我们确定了企业家用来处理不同来源的耻辱的三种策略——可视化、混淆和转变，包括部落耻辱、瑕疵和与产品相关的令人厌恶的内容。我们的研究结果为身体在创业策略中的作用提供了新颖的见解，以解决耻辱并为其产品赢得合法性，从而为有关耻辱环境中的创业精神和文化创业精神的文献做出贡献。